OpenRouter vs Together AI
A side-by-side comparison of OpenRouter and Together AI, two Inference tools, drawn from Ignaite's continuously-verified listings.
Compared from listings verified as of
At a glance
| Attribute | OpenRouter | Together AI |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Inference | Inference |
| Pricing | FREEMIUM | FREEMIUM |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Deployment | Cloud | Cloud |
| Platforms (differs) | API, Web | API |
| Model support | Multi-model | Multi-model |
| Vendor (differs) | OpenRouter | Together |
| Capabilities (differs) |
|
|
The honest brief
OpenRouter
Swap among 300+ models behind one OpenAI-compatible key with auto-fallback and a single consolidated bill.
- Swap models by changing one parameter
- Automatic provider fallback
- One consolidated bill
- Dozens of free models
- Pass-through token pricing
- Adds a routing hop vs direct provider
- Markup on some routes
- Not a self-hostable gateway
Together AI
One stop for the open-model stack: hundreds of open-weights models served plus both LoRA and full fine-tuning.
- LoRA and full fine-tuning
- Competitive inference-at-scale pricing
- OpenAI-compatible API
- Dedicated endpoints + GPU clusters
- Open models only, no frontier closed models
- Less specialized than single-model hosts
- Throughput varies by model demand
When to pick which
OpenRouter leans on Multi-model access as a headline capability; Together AI treats it as secondary.
- Multi-model access (primary capability)
They also differ on:
- Platforms
- API, Web · API
Their capability lists differ in recorded depth — compare the full lists above before deciding.